It's got 4 joysticks, a spinner, a 3" trackball, and no fewer than 33 buttons. Four of those buttons are on the sides of the panel, like pinball paddle controls (a $30 upgrade that I didn't pay for... I'm not a big pinball fan).

Well, the guts of it are really three different devices. The buttons and joysticks are wired to an Ultimarc I-Pac4 keyboard encoder, which uses either a PS/2 keyboard or USB connection. The trackball its buttons have their own PS/2 mouse / USB connector, and the spinner has yet another USB connector.

It sounds complicated, but setting it up was very easy. MAME comes with a .ctrl setting for this very device.

Having had some experience with MacMAME and being a (platform agnostic) hardware geek it actually doesn't sound complicated at all to me. I love the project and the updates you post about it. Can't wait to see what it looks like all together.

Now if I could just figure out how to do the same thing here and get the stuff shipped to Australia at a price that doesn't require me to take out a second mortgage on the house.